Paleo-Indian Lithic Technological Structure and Organization in the Lower
Great Lakes Area
Analyses of lithic assemblages from four fluted point sites in southwestern
Ontario are presented with the aim of generating models of technological structure
and organization. The models are concerned with the explanation of formal
artifact variability in terms of proximate and ontogenetic causes such as
manufacturing procedures, hafting, and recycling, as well as with explanation
at an ultimate or adaptive level. The adaptive models are concerned with how
tool production systems worked in order to overcome incongruences between
lithic resource locations and tool use locations. Such models are important
in that they 1) recognize lithic materials as a resource; 2) emphasize the
role of advance planning in human adaptations; 3) realize that tool production
systems are open and are subject to causative factors beyond a proximate level;
and 4), focus attention on the explanation of "basic properties" of
tool production systems such as the use of certain raw materials and the degree
of standardization of reduction strategies.
Detailed models of technological structure are developed which produce several
insights into factors conditioning formal variability in the assemblages.
Such models also lead to the recognition of several characteristics useful
for placing material in time/space frameworks. In terms of organization, it
is noted that Paleo-Indians used only a limited number of lithic material
types and sources out of all of those potentially available - a practice which
greatly increased incongruences between source and tool use locations. It
is suggested that the basic constraint limiting lithic source use is that
such materials served as "social descriptors" of homogeneity among
groups who relied largely on "risk-pooling" strategies of resource
risk reduction. Several strategies related to tool design, inventory management
and segmenting of the reduction sequence, are delineated or suggested which
were used by Paleo-Indians to reduce the bulk and maintain the use-flexibility
potential of lithic items transported some distance.